Sunday, August 28, 2016

Standing Up at Standing Rock

Some
1,000 Native American activists from the Standing Rock Indian
Reservation and across the country faced off against police and
security forces protecting the construction of the Dakota Access
pipeline project. Dozens of people have been arrested and assaulted
by police while attempting to stop the project, and many more
continue to risk arrest to protest the pipeline.
The Dakota
Access pipeline, which is being built by Energy Transfer
Partners, is planned to stretch 1,172 miles from the Bakken oil
fields in North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa, before ending
in Illinois.
The
$3.8 billion project was begun in 2014 and is supposed to be
completed by the end of the year. Once finished, the pipeline will
carry a daily load of 570,000 barrels of oil extracted through
hydraulic fracturing. It will cross 209 rivers, creeks and
tributaries. Unless, that is, activists have anything to say about
it.

The Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST), members of the Hunkpapa Lakota
Nation, has been leading the resistance. The current stage of
pipeline construction has reached a segment that runs only a
half-mile away from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, located in
North and South Dakota.
In
response, the Nation has put together a legal and activist challenge
to the pipeline.
The
SRST filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which
quietly approved the pipeline without proper consultation with the
tribe. The SRST says the route of the pipeline--through the Missouri
River and Lake Oahe--will disturb tribal burial grounds and affect
the Nation's drinking water. In a statement, Standing
Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said:

The
Corps puts our water and the lives and livelihoods of many in
jeopardy. We have laws that require federal agencies to consider
environmental risks and protection of Indian historic and sacred
sites. But the Army Corps has ignored all those laws and fast-tracked
this massive project just to meet the pipeline's aggressive
construction schedule.

The
land between the Cannonball River and the Heart River is sacred. It's
a historic place of commerce where enemy tribes camped peacefully
within sight of each other because of the reverence they had for this
place. In the area are sacred stones where our ancestors went to pray
for good direction, strength and protection for the coming year.
Those stones are still there, and our people still go there today.

Before
the protests, 31 Lakota youth from various reservations in North and
South Dakota participated
in a relay run more than 1,600 miles to Washington, D.C., to hand
over a petition condemning the pipeline signed by over 160,000
people.
The
camp has swelled to approximately 1,000 activists, both Native and
non-Native, anxious to continue the fight for indigenous sovereignty
and environmental justice.
The
protest have been nonviolent, but that hasn't stopped Morton County
Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier from making absurd claims that the protesters
were about to physically destroy the pipeline. "They were
preparing to throw pipe bombs at our line, M80s, fireworks, things of
that nature to disrupt us," Kirchmeier
claimed.
Work
on the pipeline was halted on August 19 over what officials claimed
were "safety concerns" caused by protesters. A judge is
currently considering whether to grant an order halting construction
while various arguments can be heard in court.
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - DAVE
ARCHAMBAULT II invoked treaty rights in his call to halt the
pipeline, stating, "We don't want this black snake within
our Treaty boundaries."
In
1851 and 1868, the Lakota (Sioux) signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with
the U.S. government, creating the Great Sioux reservation, which
included all of South Dakota west of the Missouri river. The treaty
also protected hunting rights in the surrounding area, including
where the pipeline is set to go through.
While
numerous violations of the treaties have displaced the Lakota, there
is also a history of resistance--which we are seeing again today with
the struggle against the Dakota Access pipeline and the breaking of
treaty rights and denial of sovereignty to the Native community.
The
struggle is also a continuation of the successful fight waged by
Native activists and environmentalists against the Keystone XL
pipeline. Much like that fight, Native Americans are leading the
way--but it is has created the opportunity to build a multiracial
movement against climate change.
One
resounding message from Native American activists has been the power
of solidarity. During the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, for
example, Natives
and non-Natives formed the Cowboy-Indian Alliance. Similar
coalitions are being forged in the current struggle.
Crow
Creek Sioux Tribal Chairman Brandon Sazue explained
in a Facebook statement why he and his tribe were offering
support:

We
will stand with you, my relatives. Whether we are Native, white,
African American, etc. Our water is our most precious resource along
with our children. We must all stand together in this most urgent of
times. This is not about race, but about the human race! What we do
today will make a difference tomorrow! If there was ever a time to
stand united, that time is now!

This
sentiment is widespread in Indian Country. Oglala Sioux Tribal
President John Yellow Bird Steele sent supplies and buses of people
from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to Cannonball to support the
protesters. Currently, over 60 American Indian Nations are
represented at the camp.
Farmers
in Iowa are also putting up a fight against the pipeline and asking
the courts for an injunction against eminent domain proceedings.
The
SRST has been calling on the Obama administration to halt the
pipeline. Obama is only the fourth sitting president to make an
official visit to an Indian reservation, and he choose
to come to the Standing Rock Reservation.
But
Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have been
silent on the issue of the Dakota Access pipeline. The Democratic
Party continues to promote an "all of the above" energy
strategy that includes fracking and the new oil fields in North
Dakota.
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -ENEERGY
TRANSFER'S Dakota Access LLC recently
filed suit against protesters at the site, including SRST Chairman
Dave Archambault. The company claims protesters "have
created and will continue to create a risk of bodily injury and harm
to Dakota Access employees and contractors, as well as to law
enforcement personnel and other individuals at the construction
site."
A
North Dakota federal court recently granted
a temporary restraining order against protestors who are
interfering with pipeline construction.
But
activists say the real threat comes from the pipeline and the
environmental damage it will cause, not from the efforts to halt it.As Hunkpapa
Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull once stated:

We
have now to deal with another race--small and feeble when our fathers
first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they
have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease
with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break
but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak
to support the rich and those who rule.

Today,
those pushing for the Dakota Access pipeline are steamrolling through
Indian treaty land without concern for the earth or the people whose
land they are invading.
It
took a strong movement to halt the Keystone XL pipeline. We will need
to continue that struggle to halt other pipelines and the system
Sitting Bull described and fight for a society that puts people and
the planet first over profits.
>>The
article above was written by Brian Ward, and is reprinted from
socialistworker.org.